Traditionally, machines that produce thrust or provide propulsion for aerial vehicles do so by either pushing against the air the way airplanes, jets, or helicopters do, or by expelling burned fuel the way rockets do. Many patents have been filed for propulsion systems that do not work in this conventional fashion. Many of these patents work against gyros to generate propulsion.
Patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,860,317 to Laithwaite (1999), U.S. Pat. No. 5,024,112 to Kidd (1991), UK patent 2,090,404 to Russell (1982), all describe gyro-based propulsion systems that have an excessive number of moving parts, U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,331 to Rogers (1991), U.K. patent 205,753 to Morgan (1988), U.S. Pat. No. 5,090,260 to Delroy (1992), and Japanese patent 60-56182 to Kiyunmeru (1985), also have the same problem. This adds unnecessary weight, decrease energy efficiency, and give cause for concern of mechanical breakdown. In addition, these overly complex machines seem unnecessarily expensive to build, making them impractical for manufacturing.
Propulsion system patents using principles other than gyros that claim to be able to produce the same type of propulsion (without expelling expended fuel or pushing against the medium through which they travel) suffer from the same problems of over complexity. Examples of these patents are U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,439 to North (1987), U.S. Pat. No. 4,409,856 to De Weaver (1983), U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,396 to De Weaver (1984). U.S. Pat. No. 5,150,626 to Nevarro (1992), U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,958 to Black (1993), U.S. Pat. No. 5,791,188 to Howard (1998), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,966,986 to Laul (1999).
Basically, every prior attempt at designing a propulsion system that can levitate a vehicle has failed to keep it simple.
The present invention is superior to the above patents due to its mechanical simplicity with only three moving components. There is less cause for concern of mechanical break down, and less weight, aside from the fact that the present invention is less expensive to manufacture. The present invention is more energy efficient due to fewer moving parts wasting energy in friction.
The present invention is also a beautiful, almost hypnotic, thing to watch when operated at slow speed making it desirable as a work of kinetic art.
The present invention component also may serve as educational tools as classroom demonstrations of the forces acting upon gyros. By turning the present invention by hand, the forces of the gyro can be felt by the amount of torque that it takes to turn it. The precession force of the gyro can be easily reversed to cause the present invention to be easy to turn instead of hard. The present invention component can then be a hands-on learning tool beneficial to schools everywhere.